being adopted, I do not know my own history.
I have never known a biological family or experienced physical likeness.
So, I imagined in a small but narcissistic way
if my birth parents had had a son, in this lifetime or another
Donald was part of my family, a lost connection, link, or as they say
the missing piece.
In our first conversation outside of A Different Light,
I mentioned offhandedly, “I’m looking for place to stay, Do you know any?”
“No,” he said thoughtfully. My apartment's tiny. My sister stays with me,”
but then added in the generous spirit I came to know,
“You’re welcome if you want to sleep on my couch.”
I guess I was again struck by Donald and the fact that in 1987
I’d been befriended by a complete stranger who offered me a place to sleep.
I didn’t accept, but it began a friendship and camaraderie
heightened by frequent dinners, telephone conversations, and
subsequent artistic collaborations.
The most memorable collaboration was at the tribute to Pat Parker,
The pioneering Black lesbian poet who hailed from San Francisco
like Audre Lorde had died prematurely from cancer.
It was an all-star event where Craig Harris and Essex Hemphill appeared.
Cheryl Clarke read Pat’s signature work,
“Where will you be when they come?”
Donald and I read Pat’s work about childrearing
With her signature humor
“Some people think we wake up
chanting to our children
you’re gonna be a dyke, you’re gonna be a dyke.”
In addition to activism and poetry, Donald was part
of a musical group that sang acappella spirituals.
His favorite was an old soul classic titled, “Grandma’s Hands.”
Seeing him as he sang this song in concert, caused me to write
after his death:
I know if there’s heaven,
He’s wearing kente cloth
head back
eyes to sky
singing about grandma’s hands.
He was pivotal to my development as a poet.
He sometimes grabbed me after a reading like a protective older brother,
wrapped his arms around me and said, “God bless this woman, bless her.”
A few years later, when he disclosed he was HIV positive,
Within months had full blown AIDS, we grew closer
Spent long hours on the telephone talking
when we both should have been at work.
Our most memorable dialogue came during the LA riots
after the Rodney King verdict when white policemen
were acquitted of savagely beating Black motorist Rodney King.
In response, in certain LA neighborhoods Blacks began looting
stores and stealing among many things washing machines.
Donald, as a devout Christian and moral human being
was appalled by the idea of Black people looting stores and stealing washing machines
which in my mind aren’t in any way restitution for more than
400 years of slavery
equitable recompense for the physical and psychological stress
not a compensatory package for our massive and
remaining scars
So I as a self-styled revolutionary I believed in a
temporary settlement,
while Donald as if he could see all of the gains of our ancestors disintegrate,
repeated in shock and disbelief, “Washing machines?!
I can’t believe they’ve stolen washing machines.”
In subsequent conversations, his positions on life,
and body weakened.
He left work.
What I didn’t know then but know now as
the last time I would ever see him in the flesh
is after I had gone to see him accept an award for his
extraordinary work as the director of AIDS films.
For the honor, he wore a dark blue suit. He resembled a soldier,
a statuesque and decorated warrior recently returned
from fields of World War II.
Donald was proud and only indicated illness after the ceremony
when alone with him.
He asked for a drink of water and held onto my arm feebly
like a young man who’d aged in rapid, meteoric amounts of time.
Weeks later he was emaciated, smothered with KS lesions, pneumonia, and bedridden.
He lost motor skills, even ability to control his bowels.
Like many in the end, he did not allow visitors,
needed a nurse to clothe and bathe him.
In our final conversation, he could no longer speak,
but when told by a friend and nurse I was on the line
he whispered into the mouthpiece a barely audible,
“I love you.”
I was standing outside of my job at the agency for lesbian
and gay youth when I received news of Donald’s passing.
Like a cords of a broken exposed telephone, all I felt were wiry fingers
of cold, steel, stock.
As I looked around at the surrounding birds, trees, sky,
all that seemed to remain on that early summer day only the ground
looked welcoming like a cool and restful mat, I wanted to lie down on,
press my ears, face against it to feel closer to Donald.
I wanted to lay down, rolling back and forth,
screaming out, the way I’d seen one grief stricken young man
do on the late spring day Rory Buchanan died.
He laid on the pavement outside of the funeral home and
screamed rocking and rolling the way people in some Black Pentecostal
churches do when someone’s possessed by spirits
or the holy ghost
Or at funerals when grief gets too much
The way I’d seen once at a childhood family cookout
too much lighter fluid caused a gas grill to blow up
my father shielded me but I suffered third degree burns.
My aunt’s clothes caught fire, she tried to put it out by laying down
on the ground and rolled back and forth to relieve the horror
and sensation of skin and flesh burning.
The same way I’d seen my father do when his mother, my beloved grandmother
died, he picked up her face and from the casket and kissed her.
My grandfather’s skin too was on fire and he shouted, I will meet you, Pearl,
at those pearly gates
Wanting to join his partner in heaven.
This was all I felt, every emotion held, while I sat at the memorial
for Donald where I was not asked and did not speak.
The memorial had been arranged by Other Countries, and his brothers
had full control.
Perhaps they too were weary, tired of the Funeral Diva.
Perhaps they wanted a new person, a fresher face,
but to see and hear all of them assembled who at that moment
seemed to be strangers, it was all I could do to show restraint,
not scream out at the top of my lungs—
None of you really knew him as I did, he was my brother.
For a politico, a so-called revolutionary, someone belonging
to a larger picture, these were selfish thoughts, but I needed in one way
to
